


late night board games and steamed buns

by allp_wips



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-06-27 06:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19785310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allp_wips/pseuds/allp_wips
Summary: Alex doesn't start going over to Astra's place when she has trouble sleeping because she likes her. Absolutely not. Jury is still out on whether she can even tolerate the woman. Like is out of the question.





	late night board games and steamed buns

Alex doesn't start going over to Astra's place when she has trouble sleeping because she likes her. Absolutely not. Jury is still out on whether she can even tolerate the woman. Like is out of the question.

The real reason is, it's not like she has anywhere else to go, when her nightmares get too bad. Most of her other friends are humans who sensibly follow a good sleep cycle. Kara might be Kryptonian, but she likes to follow human circadian rhythms for reasons Alex doesn't fully understand. J'onn would just be a complete worrywart about it all.

That leaves Astra, who Alex knows stays up late into all hours of the night, because she had been the one assigned to watching her, when the Kryptonian was still under DEO monitoring. Somehow, Alex doesn't think her nocturnal habits have changed, in the year and a half since she was released from probation by the DEO.

When she picks the lock on Astra's apartment and walks in, Astra doesn't actually look surprised to see her, superhearing and all.

"You could simply have knocked on the door, Alex."

"Wasn't sure that you wouldn't just ignore me," Alex says.

Astra purses her lips, as if considering the option still.

"Why are you here?"

Alex shrugs, and walks over to the desk that the woman is sitting at. There's various spare bits and pieces of machinery scattered around on it, and Alex recognizes some of them.

"How's that omegahedron deconstruction going?"

"You came all this way to a request a status report that I could have transmitted to you easily?" Astra looks skeptical.

Alex looks away.

"Kara got hurt today," she says, in a low voice.

Astra looks wrecked, when Alex looks back at her.

"I know." Her voice is equally low. "They wouldn't let me into the DEO to look at her, but she flew by after."

"I could have killed Lord," Alex growls. "I was trying to sleep and all I could think of was going over to him and- and-"

She can't recount how many times she's woken up in a cold sweat at night, plagued by sudden fears of someone she loves getting hurt. Kara. J'onn. Winn. Lucy. James. Somehow, it's never about herself. Her body seems to be under some illusion that it's invincible. But when it comes to even truly invincible loved ones like Kara, Alex can't help but worry that someday, something will take them from her, and she can't stop it.

She doesn't say that out loud, and yet, Astra looks like she understands.

"You know that it's no use to worry," she says. "What happens, happens."

It would be a meaningless platitude, except that it comes from someone who's had their entire planet destroyed, despite trying to stop it.

"Yeah, well," Alex says. "Doesn't mean I can just shut my brain off."

"Your military systems place too little emphasis on mental health," Astra says. She makes it sound more like fact, than criticism. "Kryptonian soldiers were fortified against this exact sort of thing, before being deployed."

Alex frowns. "Still doesn't help me, Astra."

Astra looks down at the mess of machinery in front of her, with an evaluating expression.

"I suppose I was getting nowhere with this tonight," she says, and gets up.

She walks over and pulls a cardboard box out of a cupboard, bringing it back to the desk.

"Monopoly?" Alex asks, leaning over to read the title on the box. "You know how to play monopoly?"

"Kara taught me," Astra says. She slightly embarrassed, but her haughty expression reasserts itself soon, and she raises her eyebrows at Alex. "I assume you have nowhere else to be, tonight?"

Alex loses. She loses handily, and she can't accept that, so she strong-arms Astra into another game the next night. And then, when she loses that, she forces her into another game the next week.

\---

It becomes a thing. Alex starts dropping by more and more often, until she's found easily at Astra's place that at her own apartment, most nights. Even Kara picks up on it.

"I didn't know you both liked board games so much," she says. "Astra never even comes to game nights, no matter how often I invite her."

Alex shrugs. "It's not just board games. Last night, we played poker."

Kara snickers. "Did she beat you again?"

"I was sick!" Alex protests. "I was recovering from the flu; that gave her an advantage!"

Kara snickers again. "Uh-huh."

\---

"A television," Astra says, wrinkling her nose, as Alex sets the TV up on the stand, connects it and steps back. "How primitive."

"Shut up," Alex says. "This way, we don't have to keep playing board games every night I'm here. You can actually watch some of those shows that Kara keeps telling you about."

"I think you're just afraid of losing to me again," Astra says, but she still catches the remote that Alex lobs at her. "What did you have it mind to watch?"

"I've got a few things queued up," Alex says. "Let's start with _ Homeland Security _ . Kara loves it, and you two seem to share similar tastes."

Astra hates it.

"I do not understand," she says, looking bemused as the first episode comes to a close. "You spend entire days at your job in this kind of danger. Why would you come home to watch shows about it, too?"

Alex rolls her eyes, and they have another argument about it, and end up reaching a compromise where they watch a night of nature documentaries for every night of Alex's TV shows.

\---

The next month, Kara gets kidnapped by Lex Luthor, and Astra and Kara put their nights on hold, as they work around the clock to get her back.

It takes a no-holds-barred invasion right into LexCorp's heavily guarded headquarters to retrieve Kara. By the end of it, every agent is exhausted and bruised and battered, Alex and Astra among them. But, they get Supergirl back.

They get  _ Kara  _ back, and Alex stumbles home that night in a state of simultaneous exhaustion and exultation.

She tosses and turns on the sofa, unable to get to sleep, but unable to also focus on the show she had hoped to binge. She's debating taking her chances and going out for a midnight ride, when there's a knock on her door.

"Hello," Astra says, when Alex opens the door to find her outside. The word falls unfamiliarly from her lips.

"Hey," Alex says, and steps aside to let her in. She's not surprised to see her, not really.

Astra limps a little, as she walks in.

"Still haven't got your powers back?" Alex asks.

Astra, who had burned it out getting past Lex's warsuit, shakes her head.

"Kara is still out with her friends," she says. "They're ecstatic to have her back."

"I know," Alex says.

There's a silence, not an awkward one, but one born of exhaustion on the side of both parties.

"Cards?" Alex offers.

Astra shakes her head mutely, and walks over to wrap herself up in the comforter that Alex had discarded on the sofa, staring blankly at the wall in front of her. After some hesitation, Alex joins her. She doesn't even bother arguing with Astra this time, when she puts a nature doc on again; they're both too exhausted even for that natural state of their co-existence.

Alex stares blearily at the figure gently handling a koala on the screen, narrating in a soft voice that seems to entrance Astra. What a stark contrast to the violence they had endured just that morning.

"You wish we were all like that," Alex says.

This is the part of humanity that Astra seems to like. Altruistic, an ideal in harmony with nature, in a way humans can never really live up to. Not messy, complicated  _ real _ humans like Alex.

"You  _ are _ like him," Astra mumbles, against her shoulder. She sounds sleepy. Alex wonders if she even realizes that she's leaning against her. "I've seen the way you care for people, in the medical ward."

Alex sighs. "I wish it didn't have to be like, all the time."

"One day, it won't be." Astra says.  _ "We are stones on a path to peace." _

"You know I hate it when you quote things," Alex says.

"I know." Astra turns the volume of the TV down a little lower.

Alex doesn't know when her eyes close. What she does know is that she briefly wakes up in the middle of the night, to find the TV off, and Astra curled up against her, both of them wrapped up in the same comforter. Alex decides to go back to sleep, electing to think about that the next morning.

The next morning, she wakes up alone in the comforter to an empty apartment, but there's a mug of coffee - still warm - on the dining table, and a plate of toast.

\---

"You really cannot think of anything better to do than play cards with your ex-nemesis?" a fully healed Astra asks her the following week, as she adds another card to the draw pile.

"Ex-nemesis?" Alex snorts. "Please. You barely pinged on the rival scale."

She had come upon the pack of Uno cards the previous night, while cleaning up her apartment for the first time in months, and had decided it would make for a nice break from marathoning docs, no matter how nice Astra finds David Attenborough's voice to be.

Astra looks offended. "This is why you lose every time we play."

"This is why you got stabbed," Alex shoots back, throwing her own card on top of the draw pile.

She's down to two cards. All she needs is one more turn to go her way, and she can finally win a game against the Kryptonian.

She's so close. "Hurry up, Astra. It's your turn, or are you too scared to play?"

With a look of supreme satisfaction on her face, Astra places a +4 card on top of the pile.

"Draw four," she commands Alex, and then, in an innocent voice. "What was that about being too scared to play?"

Alex hisses out a frustrated breath. "I hate you. I really, truly hate you."

Astra raises an eyebrow. "You're the one who insisted that we play this. I was perfectly content with watching that terrible show that you like."

"You're a demon," Alex grumbles. "A demon, that's what you are."

"But, if you were the devil, you are fair," Astra says, and it sounds like she's quoting something again.

Alex stares. "Did you just call me the devil?"

Astra looks exasperated.

The next morning, when she gets home, Alex looks up what that quote means. She spends the next week feeling like she's floating on air.

\---

The next month, when Alex drops by, Astra has snacks.

Well, she calls them snacks, but Alex is pretty sure that the hot casserole in the center of the kitchen table, and the steamed buns on the side, are more dinner than she's eaten in quite a few months.

"Oh, you were expecting company," she says, something ugly sitting heavily in her stomach.

Stupid. Astra is allowed to have other people she hangs with.

Astra gives her an odd look, and then her gaze flits to the table.

"Kara was here earlier," she says. "Those are... what do you call them? Leftovers."

Alex blinks. " _ Kara _ left food behind?"

Astra looks uncomfortable, all of a sudden.

"Is that so strange?"

"No," Alex says, but she makes a note to do a thorough medical check up on her sister later. "Here, I brought you the book we were arguing about last time."

It's a book by one of her father's old colleagues, on the subject of Kandorian literature and culture. Astra flips through it rapidly, frowning in places and looking startled in others.

Alex starts on the steamed buns while she reads. They're amazing, even if she can't immediately identify the ingredients. There's no way this is store-bought, though, and there's no way Kara has left something this good only half-eaten. Not that Alex is going to say anything about it, if Astra isn't.

There's something nice about just sitting there quietly, munching on the buns, while Astra sits on the other side of the table and reads.

She could get used to this, Alex realizes, with an odd pang of fear in her heart.

Before she can dwell on it, Astra reaches the end of the book, and puts it down on the kitchen table with a soft thump.

"It can't be that bad," Alex says.

"Suppose some wrote a dissertation on Earth culture based only on those reality shows you pretend to hate watching," Astra says.

Alex rolls her eyes. "Alright, alright, I get it."

There is a silence, and then Astra speaks again.

"How were they?"

There's an odd lack in her voice, of the confidence it usually naturally exudes.

"I knew it!" Alex says. "Those were not leftovers. You made them for me."

Astra looks away.

"And if I did?" she snaps. "Your idea of what dinner entails would force anyone to take pity on you."

Alex reaches over, and places her hand on top of Astra's linked ones on the table. Astra freezes, and something in Alex's heart flips again.

"Astra," she says, softly. "They were great. Thank you."

Astra does something Alex has never seen her do before. She goes beet red.

\---

They both almost die, in their next mission to extract a mineral with Harun-El like properties from a red star system. Whey they finally make it back to the DEO, Alex has suffered several minor cuts all over her body, and Astra - a pale and almost unconscious Astra - has a broken arrow sticking through one arm.

Two nights later, when Astra finally gets cleared to leave the DEO's medical ward, Alex is waiting for her, with a coat in one hand, and two tickets to the newest Star Wars movie in the other.

"I don't understand," Astra starts, for the tenth time. "Alex, I can fly again."

"We're taking my bike," Alex says, stomping in front of her. "Just put the coat on, so no one is going to question why you're walking into a theatre with a skinsuit, please."

"Are you really so eager to this movie, that you need to see it this late at night?" Astra asks her, falling into step with a huff, the coat wrapped around her waist instead of being worn. "I understand if you're unable to sleep, after what we experienced on Aurelia, but you set up a television in my apartment just for that purpose."

Alex rolls her eyes. She's already jittery about this, and Astra's extended protests aren't helping.

"What's wrong with us going out once in a while?" she asks, rounding on her. "We're friends. Friends go out. Why can't we?"

Astra draws in a deep breath, as they stare at each other.

"You hate me," she reminds Alex.

Alex exhales.

"Yeah, I do," she says, grabbing Astra's arm. "I hate you so much that I'm going to make you suffer through all two and a half hours of this movie that you won't understand."

Surprisingly, Astra is the one that ends up really enjoying the movie. Alex finds it merely okay, but that's not what it's about, really. It's about the fact that she gets to sit with Astra side by side at the back of a not very crowded theater, eating bad snacks and murmuring occasional comments, carving out a little moment of shared peace in their otherwise chaotic life.

\---

The night that they kiss, Alex and Astra are bickering about the fact the latter had almost been arrested, on her first day on the job as special consultant to the EPA.

"I'm just saying," Alex says, "maybe if you hadn't started by threatening the life of the pipeline company's CEO, it might have gone better."

Astra glares, arms crossed around herself.

"As if you're one to talk."

Maybe not," Alex acknowledges. "But, there's a reason I finally decided to take J'onn's offer to go to therapy. You can't change things overnight, Astra."

Astra looks at her, and then away.

"You have a lot of unsolicited advice to give, towards someone you supposedly hate," she says.

Alex stares at her. The tension in the room drains away, when their gazes lock.

Alex shifts over on the couch towards her. She settles down, not on Astra's lap exactly, but with one leg tucked up against the side of her thigh, and the other sprawled across her legs, so that she has no way of escaping without pushing Alex off.

Not that Astra seems to be in the mood to push her off, from the way she's staring back at her.

"Alex-"

"I don't hate you," Alex says, softly. "You know that, right?"

Astra blinks at her. She looks soft in the dim light, and Alex's heart does a painful flip.

"I-" Alex starts, and then stops.

Her heart is suddenly hammering in her throat. There's no going back from this. If Alex speaks, she can't just pretend that she was lying, or take back her words. Not with Astra, who'll see right through something like that.

"I don't come here just because you're the only alternative," she finally admits. "Not anymore. Actually, maybe not ever. I mean, I could've just gone for a drive, or a walk, or anywhere else really, every time I couldn't sleep. Instead, I always kept coming here."

Astra is still silent, and Alex isn't exactly sure why, but she also hasn't recoiled in horror yet. Alex decides to push on.

"I think some part of me always wanted to get to know you better. I just... needed a push."

Astra nods, finally showing a reaction that slows Alex's heart rate down a bit.

"Some part of me always wanted to know you better as well," she says.

Her hands come up to frame Alex's jaw. Alex closes her eyes and just  _ feels  _ the cool softness of the fingers against her skin.

"You feel good," she whispers, and feels Astra laugh silently in response.

Alex opens her eyes and galres at her, mock-offended. "We can't all quote Shakespeare on a whim, gene-"

Astra kisses her before she's finished the sentence. Her mouth slips against her just as easily as she's slipped into Alex's heart. It's gentle and a little messy and Alex is completely taken over by it, until there's just  _ Astra Astra Astra _ beating in her veins. She kisses Astra back harder, like someone starving, grabbing fistfuls of her hair to keep her in place, if she has even the slightest intention of escaping.

"I can hear your heartbeat," Astra murmurs, when they finally separate. "I can always hear your heartbeat."

Alex manages a breathy laugh, pulls her back in, and kisses her again.


End file.
